The gift of accountability

Love this change in how we frame of accountability from “the one who gets the blame” to “the one who tells the story of where and why things went wrong”.

our knee-jerk response to the question of “what does it mean to be accountable?” is too often “the person who gets fired when things go wrong.” This is a measure of accountability that equates accountability and punishment: to borrow from Sidney Dekker, it makes accountability something you settle, a debt you have to pay. When you’re accountable for a car accident, you pay the fine; when you’re accountable for not hitting the annual target, you lose your job.

In contrast:

Fortunately, that’s not the only model for accountability we have. Webster’s 1913 defines accountability as being “called on to render an account.” To render an account is to tell a story. In this way, an account becomes something you give—something you observe, come to understand, and then narrate. Being accountable in this model means being the storyteller rather than the fall guy.

But if you’re not quite ready to become VP, you can start with yourself:

So to get started, you can refrain from the demeaning self-talk the next time you do something that, in hindsight, looks like an error. Instead, you can practice asking questions like, what was I thinking and noticing when this happened? How did I respond to what I saw happening? What did I expect? How did I see myself at that moment? The point here isn’t to figure out what went wrong so you can avoid making the same mistake again. The point is to understand how the choices, decisions, and actions made sense at that time.

It all comes back to blogging:

you have a story to tell—a story full of fuckups and hard times and achievements unlocked and enough lessons for several lifetimes. Don’t keep it all to yourself.